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30 tortured bodies found in Damascus: watchdog

Syrian opposition activists say dozens of tortured and mutilated corpses have been found in Damascus at the end of a year of steadily worsening conflict.

Activists say dozens of mutilated corpses were found in the suburb of Barzeh in northern Damascus. Some had reportedly been decapitated.

"They bore signs of torture and have so far not been identified," said the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on medics and activists on the ground in compiling its tolls.

The Syrian Revolution General Commission, a grassroots network of anti-regime activists, estimated there were 50 bodies, adding "their heads were cut and disfigured to the point that it was no longer possible to identify" them.

The reports could not be verified independently because of restrictions on the international media by the Syrian authorities.

To the city's south, government troops, including the elite Republican Guard, intensified an assault on Daraya, part of a cluster of Sunni Muslim-dominated suburbs.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says nearly 40,000 people were killed in Syria in 2012, 90 per cent of all the fatalities since the uprising began nearly two years ago.